car trip – Raising Readers…

A Reminder About Leaving Books in the Car…

One of my earliest blog posts (almost 2 years ago!) was about my wonderful epiphany about having books that stay in the car for the kids, so they always have something to “do” while we’re riding. You can read that post here. Even then, my idea slightly backfired with a child who wanted to constantly read out facts to me. Unfortunately, I just discovered that another casualty of having books stay in the car is the destruction of the actual books! 😦

After only a short ride to lunch and Target (’cause its Saturday, so a Target visit is a must), this is what I found in the backseat when I got home:

Yep, that’s two pages of a book that are no longer part of the actual book. Now in the beginning of this car ride, they were arguing over the book. My 7-year old wouldn’t share the book with my 9-year old and she was getting frustrated because he was flipping past pages she “needed” to look at right then. The whining, yelling, and fussing got so bad that I threatened to throw the book out the window. Actually, I said that their behavior makes me want to throw the book out the window, because as my daughter immediately responded, “We treat books like they’re precious.” Exactly.

So one would think that this is when the pages got ripped out, right? Nope. The pages got ripped out on the way home from Target when they were actually getting along and behaving more civilized (doesn’t a visit to Target to that to everyone?). Without any suggestions from me, they decided to put the book in the divider between the two of them, and look at the pages together! Duh! The conversations and giggling sounds were just what I had in mind when I initially suggested they keep a book in the car, just without the ripping sounds that accompanied them. But even the ripped pages was followed by giggles, so as mad as I wanted to be, I could not disrupt the happiness, mostly for fear that it would disappear, never to return.

Do I still think that having books that stay in the car is a good thing? Most definitely. Just don’t let them be books that you (or they) are super attached to, ’cause even during a pleasant read, bad things could happen.

Keep #RaisingReaders!

How I Achieved Car Trip Silence…

Reading? They did, but only part of the time.

Were they sleep? Not that lucky.

Decided to be quiet just to be nice? Ha!

Here’s the deal–recently the kids and I took a trip home to see some friends and family, which is about a 3 hour drive. Since my children have decided that this is going to be the summer where they argue constantly (!!), and I was going to be the only adult in the car, I needed to come up with something that was going to keep them relatively engaged. Last year when we made this same trip, we tried our hand at listening to an audio book, Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo. It worked pretty well, its a wonderful book, and they were into it. But I’ll be honest, having no other adult to talk to with cruise control on the interstate had me looking like this:

Naturally that is not a good look, so I had to switch back to music every so often.

This trip I decided to go with something slightly different…podcasts. Now I’m not risky enough to just try any podcast, I had to make sure it was something they would enjoy. Enter these lovelies:

Thanks to Kids Place Live on satellite radio, we’ve gotten familiar with both of these broadcasts. We listen to Mindy Thomas in the mornings during the school year and the kids love her goofy antics. We don’t catch the Story Pirates as often, but they take story written by kids, and turn them into plays they act out on the radio. When I told the kids about the options they were excited about both, so I was very optimistic.

For me, the difference between the podcasts and the audio book was the length of time. Although there are multiple episodes, each episode is less than an hour, sometimes only 30 minutes. So, I knew that if I did start to get tired again (which I did), there was an end coming near and I easily turn on music.

Now I expected them to enjoy the novelty of listening to the podcast, but what I did not expect was the silence that ensued as soon as I turned on The Story Pirates. After dealing with their bickering for what has felt like the longest first two weeks of summer ever, their silence was music to my ears. We listened to one episode of each podcast on the way down, and they begged for the same on the way back.

So, if you’re looking for something for your kiddos to listen to on a long car ride, I would definitely recommend either of these podcasts. Not only will they enjoy it, but you might too, and if nothing else, their silence will lower your blood pressure, I know it did mine!

#RaisingReaders

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